


The State of His Mind

by AngelQueen



Category: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Community: holmestice, Dialogue, F/M, Married Couple, Married Life, My First Work in This Fandom, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 10:56:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12725307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelQueen/pseuds/AngelQueen
Summary: Russell asks Holmes a question.





	The State of His Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArmchairElvis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmchairElvis/gifts).



Holmes and I already knew one another quite well before we chose to take our partnership to its natural evolution – that is, marriage. Our acquaintanceship had been one of some duration, and had seen us through a myriad of trials from London to Jerusalem. There was little that we did not already know about each other, or so we thought before we signed a piece of paper that made certain activities acceptable in the eyes of the law.

In the months after our marriage, however, we both came to realize that while two acquaintances, friends, partners, can know a great deal about one another, there can still be significant gaps in knowledge. Given our mentalities, we were not inclined to leave such disparities unattended. It was in our natures to seek out answers, and while we were realistic enough to know that we would never know _everything_ about one another – Holmes, for instance, had lived far too long for him to relay the contents of an entire life to me – we still were curious enough to come as close as we could. So we went about it in the most straightforward manner possible – we asked questions.

One such time happened in the second spring of our marriage. It was a rather chilly evening – the grip of the winter we had endured had not loosened its grip on Sussex as yet – and Holmes and I had retired to our room, though we had not yet settled down to sleep. 

My husband, having dressed for bed, pulled down the blankets while I sat at my small dressing table, running a brush through my drying hair. I would soon tie it back in a plait, or perhaps Holmes would offer to do so, given his… fondness for my hair. Though, in truth, his fondness leaned more toward taking the plait _out_ of my hair, rather than putting it in. But the purpose of this story is not to highlight the private rituals between Holmes and myself. 

As I worked, my eyes drifted to my husband’s reflection in the mirror. He had settled his tall figure into the bed, leaning back against his pillow with his eyes closed. His expression was one of peace, but I could easily see that he was by no means drifting off to sleep. 

I watched him for a time, while my fingers began the familiar process of plaiting my hair. There was a question in my mind, one that had cropped up in my thoughts fairly often lately. I had not yet given voice to it, and I debated whether this was the most appropriate moment to do so.

“Speak up, Russell,” Holmes said suddenly, interrupting my ruminations. His eyes remained closed, and his hands rested lightly on his chest. “Before whatever you are thinking of chokes you,” he added. 

My initial response was merely to raise an eyebrow, even though I was not surprised. Holmes knew me better than anyone. He knew when I was wrestling with one issue or another. That I kept looking at him most likely enlightened him to the fact that my thoughts concerned him.

Though, really, how he knew I was staring at him when I had not been doing so before he’d begun to rest his eyes was quite beyond me.

“Holmes,” I said, my voice filling the silence that had come to reign over the room, “what made you decide to retire?”

One eye opened and met my gaze in the mirror. His expression remained unchanged, but I thought I caught a glimmer of curiosity in that single grey eye. “Why this sudden interest?” 

It was a fair question. In the years they had known each other, Holmes had often spoken of many of his cases, usually as some teaching point during my apprenticeship or to make some kind of salient point during one discussion or another. Never before had he overtly alluded to what had brought him to throw off London and take up the management of his bees. Though, I also knew his retirement had not entirely been a permanent one – the Von Bork case was only one that he had given his attention after he came to Sussex. Granted, he did not work the fast, sometimes frantic, pace of his youth, but he did not entirely let go of the career he had made for himself. 

I said as much. “You kept taking cases even after you moved here to the Downs. Why did you come to Sussex, only to keep working?”

“I know you have read Watson’s scribblings, Russell,” he responded, now opening both of his eyes. “Surely you recall the man reassuring the reading public that I am quite alive and well, save only for the occasional crippling attacks of rheumatism.” The sardonic twist of his lips was more than enough to reveal what he thought of that particular message.

I rolled my eyes in his direction as I began to divide my hair into three long plaits, beginning this nightly ritual. “Your rheumatism only bothers you when it is convenient, Holmes,” I said.

He made a faint harrumphing sound, but said no more for some time. I took advantage of the silence to finish plaiting my hair, tying it off at the ends. Finished, I turned from the dressing table and rose to my feet. I crossed the room in a few quick strides and settled myself into the large, comfortable bed, pulling the blankets up over my legs. 

Once I had made myself comfortable, I let my full attention turn back to Holmes. He made no effort to lay down as I had done, and I could sense that his mind was working, going over his thoughts with its typical rapid efficiency. The conversation I had begun was not finished, but I knew enough to be patient and allow him to order his thoughts.

“It was the rheumatism, in part,” Holmes said at last. I turned on my side to face him, propping my head up on my hand. 

He did not look at me, his gaze resting on some far off point on the opposite wall of our bedroom. “In my hands.”

I nodded. For all my teasing, I knew he did occasionally suffer the pain of rheumatism in his thin, slender hands. Though, he did also claim that the bee stings he suffered while working at his hives actually lessened the pain.

“It began to affect me at an absurdly young age,” he continued with a touch of regret in his tone, “not long after I returned to London from being dead.”

From his time wandering multiple continents, and from his time with Irene Adler, he meant. I was careful to keep my expression from changing. We did not often discuss the lady that Uncle John had famously coined as ‘The Woman’; just as we did not often allude to the son he had fathered with her and had subsequently lost, twice. I refused to allow my thoughts to turn to comparing myself to her. It would be foolish to do so, and illogical to feel jealous of a woman Holmes had loved before I was even born.

“I managed the pain of it well enough for several years,” Holmes said, unaware of my thoughts. “Though it still managed to keep me from many things in which I had once taken such pleasure. My violin playing suffered grievously as result.”

I raised an eyebrow. It had never occurred to me that Holmes might have played his violin more often than he did now. I had just assumed that it was merely a hobby, a way to occupy himself when his monograph writing or a case could not engage him. I bit my lip, wondering if Uncle John had ever noticed the decrease in Holmes’ playing over the years.

“As time passed, however, it became increasingly difficult to manage the symptoms, particularly with the fogs and cold of London. It also began to interfere with the work. It became more and more difficult to perform certain experiments, or even to defend myself.”

He stopped then, and I could see his gaze had grown even more distant. I did not prompt him, did not reach out to grasp his hand. My question had initiated this conversation, and he was answering me. I was not about to break the flow of his words. The next revelation would come when he was ready.

At length, he resumed. “Two cases in particular highlighted the fact that things could not continue on as they had been. One ended with a successful apprehension of the culprit, but not before the villain shot Watson in the leg.”

My eyes widened. Uncle John was known to mention the aches in his arm and leg, incited not just by age but by the wounds he had received during his military service. Never had he spoken of any injuries gained from his adventures in running along in Holmes’ wake.

“Not long after, in the midst of a case that involved preventing a young lady from marrying a sadistic man who, it was suspected, had already murdered one wife, I was set upon by a number of thugs hired to… discourage me from continuing to work against the marriage. I later made light of the injuries, and even let Watson believe that they were not as severe as I was pretending they were in order to encourage my opponent to underestimate me, but the fact remained that I was unable to defend myself with hands that were becoming more and more crippled with pain.”

I stared at him. “When was this?” I asked quietly.

Holmes blinked, and then glanced at me, and I wondered if he had momentarily forgotten that I was even present. “Just after the turn of the century, in ’02,” he replied.

Holmes had left London and settled into the cottage in autumn of 1903, I reflected. Mrs. Hudson had told me of how miserable the first winter was, as the house had required much work to make it habitable. 

“I realized that I could not continue certain aspects of my work without endangering Watson and myself,” Holmes said. “But that was not the entirety of my decision to leave London.” When I merely raised an inquiring eyebrow, he gave me a mocking smile. “I was tired, Russell. Does that shock you? That I was tired of the constant rush and bustle of the work? That I was tired of being ‘Sherlock Holmes’?”

I cocked my head, considering the notion. There were times that the pace he set while on a case exhausted me, so no, I wasn’t surprised. Combine that exhaustion with the pain he had been in, the realization that he could no longer guard his friend’s back as he once had, and the smothering attention of those who had become so enamoured of Uncle John’s stories, then yes, I could see the intention behind his retirement.

“But you didn’t retire,” I pointed out. “Not really.”

He shook his head. “For a time, I did refrain from taking on cases. I was quite content with setting up my hives, of arranging the cottage exactly to my own preferences.” Holmes grinned. “I was quite delighted to finally have a proper lab. Mrs. Hudson was rather relieved as well, since she no longer had to work around my experiments. But, yes, once everything was as I preferred, I did find myself growing rather bored.”

 _Bored_ , I thought knowingly. The state Holmes feared perhaps the most. 

“So I began taking on the occasional case, mostly things sent my way by Mycroft.”

“Like the Von Bork case,” I supplied. 

“Yes, like the Von Bork case,” he agreed. 

For a few minutes, we lay together in silence. I rolled onto my back, my eyes going up to the ceiling as I mulled over what Holmes had revealed to me. He had been rather forthcoming, more so than I thought he might be, considering he was not a man to discuss himself or his motivations.

Still, I was not truly surprised by what he had told me. Though most of the people who had read Uncle John’s stories considered Holmes a fictional character, there were those who thought and believed him to be a real man. It was true, but those who looked at the stories and declared him flesh and blood could often be…abrasive. They behaved as though they knew him, understood him, which was as ridiculous as it was presumptuous. 

“Did I answer your question satisfactorily, Russell?” Holmes asked me as he shifted in the bed in my direction.

I turned back to him. “Yes, Holmes. Quite,” I said. 

“Good,” he said, appearing pleased. “I will be sure to think of a question that requires an equally elaborate answer from you tomorrow night. Pleasant dreams, Russell.”

I smiled faintly as he reached out to turn off the lamp. “I don’t doubt it,” I replied. “Good night, Holmes.”

It would be some years before I realized that Holmes had not revealed everything in his response to my question. Perhaps he simply had not the strength to verbalise the state of his mind when we had first encountered one another in the spring of 1915. The written word so often seemed to come more easily – which explained his many and lengthy monographs on subjects ranging from tobacco ash to beekeeping. In time, Holmes would set his pen to paper and recount what had been in his thoughts during that long ago period. Eventually, he would share those very personal memories with me. 

But that was a tale for another time.

**Author's Note:**

> The discerning reader will no doubt recognize the two Canon stories that I referenced here - _The Three Garridebs_ and _The Illustrious Client_. I did not, however, refer to them by those names, the names Doctor Watson gave them, because they were not published until 1926, whereas this story takes place in the spring of 1922. As brilliant as Russell and Holmes are, I don’t think they’re quite up to predicting story titles. ;)
> 
> The concept that the rheumatism Holmes suffered was in his hands comes from a footnote in _The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes_ , which I stumbled upon on Google Books. It mentions an article (which I sadly was not able to locate) where the author claims that it was the pain in Holmes’ hands that kept him from playing his violin as much after the Great Hiatus, and that it may very well have been that same pain that prevented Holmes from keeping Watson from being wounded in _The Three Garridebs_. Such an idea inspired me, and I ran with it.
> 
> Many, many thanks to Alice over at Letters of Mary for the beta.


End file.
